


A Sword Story

by PrinceOfOneSingleDomain



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Gen, Knights - Freeform, Medieval Medicine, Other, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Swordfighting, The Cordyceps is the plague, The fireflies are a sect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:36:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceOfOneSingleDomain/pseuds/PrinceOfOneSingleDomain
Summary: Joel saves Ellie from Marlene and her people.Except it's medieval Europe at the time of the Black Death and they want to use her as a human sacrifice.
Relationships: Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	A Sword Story

**Author's Note:**

> Another idea that popped into my head after "A Country Story" - have fun with this one!

Joel, Blade of the South, awoke to the sound of a horse’s hooves moving dirt around outside the window. A dream of quiet life with his brother Thomas followed him into the waking world. He had spent some time there with the young maiden Ellie on their journey, and he could imagine her growing up in the small gated village, untouched by the Black Death that was killing people everywhere they went, turning them into heaps of soulless flesh and monsters ready to kill at a moment’s notice.

He looked down to see his armour gone, his sword removed and his wounds patched up. But where was the maiden? He looked around him, the candlelit room of a small hut slowly coming into focus. A young squire dripped cloth in a healing solution and imbued it with the spell of his quiet prayer.

A knock at the door.

“May I?”

The squire answered.

“Aye, sister Marlene.”

Sister Marlene, her garb simple and pure, entered the room. It had been a good year since they had met in the great city of Cologne, and since then, Joel had travelled the length of France and part of England with the maiden to bring her here.

“Where is the maiden?”

“She is in good hands, I assure you.”

So she was alive. The current had almost drowned her. Joel couldn’t bear losing two girls – one daughter to the darkness of the Black Death, and now Ellie to the dark water.

He tried to get up, but a sharp gust of pain seemed rip his head open. “Thy armoured men made short work of me”, he said, and he continued, in an almost joking manner that was nevertheless dead serious, “better not get too full of their own confidence.”

“They will not, they know of thy deeds.”

She sat down at his bedside.

“Are thy wounds healing?”

“They are indeed.”

“Good, thou shalt receive the appropriate payment.”

“I shall wait until is done what must be with the maiden. We will leave in the morn.”

He heaved himself up. It felt like a job well-done at least, one of the few good things he’d done with the time the Lord had given him on earth. He’d have to beg, steal and kill to come here, but it had been worth it.

“Joel, she will not leave. She is a sacrifice to the Lord, a lamb to wash away our sins.”

His heart dropped.

“Art thou…”

“The plague that has been visited upon us is no accident, it is God’s rightful fury. She will relieve us of it. The priests are readying her as we speak. She is such a pious girl.”

“Are you mad? What will it do?”

“We have sacrificed many a virgin on the altar, but I could always tell Ellie was special. She bears a cross on her hand from birth, we will return her to God.”

“I will…”

The squire was on his feet in seconds, pinning Joel to the floor.

“Marlene! Stop this madness! There is no human sacrifice before Christ!”

“He has abandoned us. Whomever we reach must help us, and we will reach them. No, Joel, you can’t stop this. Escort him to his horse and make sure he receives his payment.”

Marlene left with quiet, hurried steps.

The squire slowly rose with Joel, and quickly pinned a dagger to the older knight’s side as soon as he was standing. Joel felt the cold steel through his thin shirt. Every time he tried to even slightly turn his head, the pressure grew stronger and more desiring of his blood.

“Old man”, the squire said, “thou art out of thine mind.”

“Is that so?”, Joel asked. The squire was about to open the door to the room, but Joel brought his upper body forward, ducked under the dagger and slammed the squire’s body into the wall. The dagger dropped, and he caught before it landed on the ground. With a resounding sound of slashing and mushy interiors, he rammed it into the squire’s belly.

“Where is she?”

“I…”

“I have no time! Where is she?”

Joel rammed the dagger into his belly again.

“The church by the river”, the squire brought up between spurts of blood, “but you’re late.”

Joel slashed his throat and watched him go down.

It was cloudy, as if God himself were blocking his view of the village. All ways grey. Joel walked through the small village. The women and children screamed at the sight of blood, pointed their fingers, hid in their homes. A single knight standing in the square turned around to face him.

“Halt!”

Joel didn’t halt. He pounced on the man like the agile cat he was in his youth and put the dagger through his ribs. Of course these people had barely any armour, they were a poor religious sect, he should’ve known the moment Marlene asked him to bring Ellie to them. The knight died under his weight, blood gushing from the wound. Joel didn’t even wait until his soul had left his body. He grabbed the Knight’s sword off his belt, unsheathed it while walking and kept going towards the church’s spire, which he could see between the crowns of multiple oaks by the river. Fury filled him. They wanted to kill her, to destroy her instead of having her say - what did he think they would have her do? Pray in a special place? His entire body was burning. It felt as if his steps left fire in their wake.

He saw three knights standing before the church, talking, full-well knowing what was going on inside. His mind wandered to Ellie in the church’s hall – her body covered by thin linen through which they would stab the ritual blade, watch her blood wash through the church’s gutters and down the aisle.

The fire within made him feel as if the world were in flames.

“Wait”, one of the knights said, “you cannot enter here! Turn b- is that blood?”

“It is! To arms, men!”, the middle one shouted. He was wearing a full suit of armour.

“Come, then!”, Joel yelled. “Come face me!”

One of the knights, looking at Joel, asked, his voice trembling with fear, “Who are you?”

“I am the devil”, Joel answered, “come to take what’s mine.”

Just then – the sound of an arrow. As if automatically, Joel’s leg shifted to the left. It was the only luck he’d had his entire life. The arrow missed. The knight, fearing that Joel truly was a demonic apparition, fled in hysterics.

Joel threw himself against a tree, his back to the supposed archer.

“He’s behind the tree!”, one of the knights yelled. They slowly approached Joel.

As soon as one of them was close enough, Joel moved with the speed of one possessed. He grabbed him by his exposed collar, threw him against the other and slashed at his throat. The blade was dull, so it didn’t cut through, but it left a gash at his very artery, and the knight grabbed at it as he went down, gurgling and coughing up blood. The last knight readied his sword.

“Come, demon”, he said. Ample time for theatrics while his brother lay dying, Joel thought. It’s what killed these fools. Being a knight wasn’t about honour. It was about stabbing and killing and bathing in blood through sheer will.

“Good, then call off your archer. Or are you scared?”, Joel said.

The knight motioned in the general direction of the archer. No arrows came.

Joel steeled himself for the fight. He’d have to make short work of the rested younger man if he hoped to make it into the church, and there was no telling if the arrows would start flying at any moment. He wouldn’t keep his back to the archer.

“Dost thou realise thou sentences mankind to eternal damnation and hellfire?”, the knight asked.

Joel detected a hint of humour in his phrasing, the way the words rolled off his tongue. He took a look at his face, something he usually didn’t do. His skin was fair. A nobleman. Why was he here? He could’ve holed up in his castle and wait for everything to blow over, even if it would take forever and a lifetime. There were only two answers – he enjoyed the killing or he believed in the cause. Joel didn’t know which one was worse anymore if you’re ready to kill a girl to achieve yours.

“We’re there already”, Joel said, “can’t get worse. And I don’t have time for this.”

“Valid answer.” The noble brandished his sword. “Come.”

Joel looked at the ground. Just a couple of feet over there…

Their swords clashed, clashed again, Joel moving quickly but not quickly enough to avoid the other’s slashes. Ultimately, his sword broke – an inferior weapon to the pure steel of the noble. The larger and younger knight threw Joel to the floor. He landed with a hard thud that disoriented him just long enough for the knight to raise to his sword.

“Thou givest thine life”, he said, “to serve a cause greater than thou canst imagine.”

Joel grabbed the one arrow that had missed his foot out of the earth and stabbed him through a small exposed part of his leg, and, as the knight came down with the pain, rammed the squire’s dagger through his throat. Immediately, an arrow whizzed past his head, and only after he’d grabbed the sword, sprinted to the church and opened its doors out of breath did he notice his ear was bleeding.

Nevermind.

They had put Ellie up on some kind of altar, dressed in purest white, and were chanting. The opened doors barely registered.

His steps did.

They lifted their heads, and the woman among them immediately screamed out.

“Heathen! Demon!”

“Shut up”, Joel said.

They were all dressed in white with gold ornaments on their clothing, but one had an entire coat of gold on his shoulders. He, who must be the head priest, grabbed the ritual blade off the table and pointed it at Joel.

“Dost thou not understand?”, he yelled while Joel approached, a figure drenched in blood so fully it no longer had skin, coming ever-closer. “We will perish, all of us, all of man! Think of the lives we're saving!”

Joel threw down his sword, grabbed the ritual blade, took the man’s head into his hands with his strong arms and rammed the blade deep into his heart.

“No! You animal!”, the woman yelled. She and the other priest moved away from the girl.

Joel watched the priest fall. He looked at his hands, then at Ellie’s white gown, and decided that smearing and ruining it would be more than worth it. He started unbinding her from the altar table.

“Wait!”

Marlene. And the sound of a bow being readied.

“Thou canst still follow thy Lord's command, Joel”, she said. “Let the girl die.”

Joel didn’t hesitate. He turned around and threw the dagger as hard as he could in the direction he knew, he felt, Marlene would attempt to dodge. She did. It hit her side before she could do anything else, and she fell to the ground, screaming for help that wouldn’t come.

“C’mon, my child”, he said as he lifted Ellie up from the table, the girl unconscious, no doubt filled with all manner of drugs and mushrooms.

He heard Marlene whimper as he walked by her.

“Joel”, she said, “please. Bring her back.”

“No.”

“Then at least leave me my life. We will find another, she may live.”

Joel thought it over. Then he put Ellie on a chair by the door and knelt down besides Marlene. Her eyes were full of fear and anger.

“No”, he said, “you’d only send your knights for us.”

He pulled the dagger out of her side and bones and put it to her throat. She looked him in the eye as he did it.

**Author's Note:**

> Certainly do hope you enjoyed that. It follows the structure of the first game's ending quite closely, but with the changes a different code of honour might dictate. I went very free-form with the shakespearean English.
> 
> Feedback of any kind is very much appreciated!


End file.
